April 19
2011

Investigating Angel interviews Tim Minear.
Angie Ninde talks to the prolific writer/director/producer about his various works in the Whedonverse, Julie Benz and his process behind key moments from Angel and Dollhouse. This podcast episode contains some Adult Language.

If this has been posted before, Giant Talking Burger knows I tried like hell to search for it but came up empty.

Great interview.The Glenn Quinn thing is sad.I think most of us knew this but to have it spelled out is still sad.

Lost of interesting insights about ATS and his work in T.V. in general.

As far as Angel specifically goes.He talks about Glenn Quinn and Doyle's death,how he got a job on Angel,briefly about Angel season 2 in relation to how a season is constructed,the episode,"Billy",writing for the characters,favorite episodes,the Angel/Darla relationship,Darla in general,how the Darla pregnancy story came about,the original pitch for the end of,"Reprise" and Darla's second death,favorite characters and favorite actors.

Yes,Joss told David Greenwalt that Angel was his show so Greenwalt could hire anybody he wanted on his writing staff which is how Tim Minear got hired since Joss thought Minear was a angry dude and at first was afraid to work directly with him.Being on Angel,Joss figured he wouldn't have to directly work with him since ATS was more Greenwalt's show.

Some of the storytelling decisions revealed in this interview are incredibly interesting. Like how Angel was even more rough with Darla before sleeping with her and that Tim had originally planned for Angel to stake Darla upon consummation. Then there was discussion of Darla's death to give life to Connor, again originally planned as a doctor staking Darla as like a vampire c-section -- and Joss suggested that she stake herself.

I shudder to think how dark and abusive AtS could've become without certain changes.

Emmie the only thing I'd caution is that Tim always brings a very dark edge to the storytelling and humor and a lot of what he was saying was in the context of actively spinning a story in a writers room. That is, just throwing out ideas and those were Tim's. And a lot of groups have that dynamic, one person does the lighter stuff, another goes as dark as they possibly can and you meet in the middle. Of course we all know that as self-sacrificing as Darla's final moment was, even that caused problems for people.

I do love more Billy backstory which I wish got more love when people make lists of seminal Buffyverse episodes. Since I always view travel along Wesley's charecter arc as starting there, I've always viewed it with quite a bit of admiration.

Azzers -- yes, I'm familiar with how writing finds balance within the group dynamic. I was more interested in noting how Tim played into that dynamic. (Though in the case of Minear/Whedon/Greenwalt, I doubt it's as simple as one does light, the other dark, yin to the yang, ba da bing, ba da boom. ;))

Regarding Darla, I think it would've been far more problematic in Season 2 for Angel to use her for sex (Minear called it "quasi-force") and then stake her upon completion (not exactly subtle, either) or in Season 3 for the doctor to stake Darla in order to save the baby.

After years of discussion of these problematic scenes, it was almost refreshing to realize that it could've been worse.

Wow--in all these years, I've never figured out that the Home Office was supposed to be where the Sr. Partners were traveling to as opposed to from. I thought the issue was just that the Partners somehow also existed on Earth in some incorporeal form. That mythology makes more sense now.